Earlier newsletters on KILLING (#2: http://www.omnicenter.org/storage/newsletters/2011/2011-12-28.pdf
) might have been categorized as AGAINST KILLING, but they were focused
exclusively on the killing of humans.
With this new newsletter, OMNI acknowledges and supports opposition to
killing all sentient beings, with special attention, at present, to the United States.

Justice for the poor (victims both of
physical and of structural violence) and rescue of the species of the planet
(victims of human violence against other living creatures) are the goals of our
comprehensive No Kill Campaign. It is a
Campaign already so richly established among nongovernmental organizations and
movements that it constitutes an international civil society. Such a humane society is announced and
described in the “The People’s Charter.”

THE PEOPLE’S CHARTER TO CREATE A
NONVIOLENT WORLD

Launch date: 11 November 2011

Recognising that:

1. The United States government dominates world affairs and is engaged
in a perpetual war (sometimes presented as a ‘war on terror’) to secure control
of essential diminishing natural resources (including oil, water and strategic
minerals) from what the 2010 United States Quadrennial Defense Review www.defenselink.mil/qdr refers to as
‘the Global commons’ (which means, in effect, anywhere in the world, including
the land of other peoples). The USA,
with less than 5% of the world’s population, consumes 33% of the
world’s resources

2. The United States
government (sometimes together with pliant government allies in Europe, the
Middle East, Asia, America
and Australia) maintains
occupation forces in countries such as Afghanistan,
Iraq and the Mariana Islands

3. The Chinese government occupies Tibet

4. The Israeli government occupies Palestine

5. The French government occupies Kanaky and French
Polynesia

6. The Indonesian government occupies West Papua

7. The Chinese government violently suppresses the people of China,
including practitioners of the gentle, meditative art of Falan Dafa, some of
whose imprisoned members are subjected to forced organ removal

8. The populations of many countries including (but not limited to) Burma, China,
Iran, North Korea, Saudi
Arabia, the Sudan,
Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and
Zimbabwe
are violently suppressed by militarily-backed dictatorships

9. Indigenous peoples in many countries have been dispossessed of their
land, culture, spirituality and human rights by settler populations from other
countries

10. The use of nuclear materials to generate electricity and create weapons
of mass destruction exposes humankind and other species to unnecessary and
unacceptable risks of radioactive contamination

12. The Earth’s natural processes are being degraded and destroyed by human
violence including (but not limited to) the destruction of ecosystems such as
forests, rivers, wetlands, grasslands and coral reefs; the over-exploitation
and pollution of fresh water supplies; and the degradation and poisoning of
industrial agricultural and fishing systems, all of which are precipitating an
unnatural and accelerating rate of species extinctions

13. There is a massive and increasing number of refugees and internally
displaced persons caused by the use of military violence and climatically
induced ‘natural’ disasters

14. Many people devote their energy to the design, manufacture and/or use
of weapons and torture equipment in order to harm, mutilate or kill fellow
human beings

15. The global economic system, maintained by Western military violence,
results in the death through starvation-related diseases of one child in
Africa, Asia or Central/South America every five seconds, often denies ordinary
working men and women a fair return for their labour, forces many people in
industrialised economies into poverty and/or homelessness, and ruthlessly
exploits the natural environment and nonhuman species

16. Violent and/or discriminatory practices often deny many groups –
including (but not limited to) children, aged people, women, working people,
indigenous peoples, racial groups, ethnic groups, religious groups, cultural
groups, people with particular sexual orientations, people with disabilities,
military personnel, incarcerated people and nonhuman species – the
opportunities to which they are entitled as living beings on Earth

17. The global slave trade denies 27,000,000 human beings the right to live
the life of their choice, condemning many individuals – especially women and
children – to lives of sexual slavery, forced labour or childhood military
service

19. There is widespread violence in the family home, in schools, at the
workplace and on the street

20. All of the violent behaviours described above have their origin in
adult violence against children: this violence generates the warped emotional
and behavioural patterns that later manifest as adult violence in its many
forms. See Why Violence?http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence

21. It is human violence – against ourselves, each other and the Earth –
that threatens to cause human extinction

22. National governments, international government organisations and global
institutions (such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation), all of which represent
national elites, are not capable of addressing the above problems…

The Purpose of The People’s Charter:

This Charter identifies eight aims of a nonviolent
strategy to mobilise ordinary people, local groups, communities, non-government
organisations and international networks opposed to these and other
manifestations of human violence to explicitly renounce the use of violence
themselves and to take nonviolent action to strategically resist this violence
in all of its forms for the sake of humankind, future generations, all other
species on Earth and the Earth itself.

The aims of this nonviolent strategy are as follows:

1. To convince or, if necessary, nonviolently compel the United States
government and United States corporations to no longer use military violence
and economic coercion to control world affairs for the benefit of the United
States elite and its allied national elites in Europe, the Middle East, Asia,
America and Australia

2. To convince or, if necessary, nonviolently compel the United States
government and its allied governments to completely dismantle their military
(including nuclear) forces and overseas bases, to decolonise or end their
occupation of all occupied territories, and to instead adopt a strategy of
nonviolent defence

3. To encourage all individuals and organisations currently resisting the
military and/or economic domination of the United States elite and its allied
elites to recognise the shared nature of our struggle and, when appropriate, to
coordinate at local, regional or global level our acts of nonviolent resistance
to this domination

4. To support the development and implementation of comprehensive
nonviolent strategies for the liberation of Afghanistan, Burma, China, French
Polynesia, Iran, Iraq, Kanaky, the Mariana Islands, North Korea, Palestine,
Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Syria, Tibet, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, West Papua,
Zimbabwe and all other countries living under the yoke of occupation or
dictatorship. (See Robert J. Burrowes, The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense:
A Gandhian Approach, State University of New York Press, 1996.)

5. To support the development and implementation of comprehensive
nonviolent strategies to end violence in the home, slavery, the sexual
trafficking of women and children, the use of child soldiers, as well as the
existence of terrorist and criminal organisations, drug cartels and cults

6. To support the development and implementation of comprehensive
nonviolent strategies to end the marginalisation and exploitation of particular
identity groups including (but not limited to) indigenous peoples; women;
workers; racial, ethnic, religious and cultural groups; children; aged people;
military personnel; incarcerated people; refugees and internally displaced
peoples; those who are homeless and/or live in poverty; people with a
particular sexual orientation; people with disabilities and nonhuman species

7. To encourage the people of the industrialised world (except those
already living in poverty) to each accept personal responsibility for reducing
their consumption of global resources to a level that is commensurate with
genuine equity for all human beings on Earth and the ecological carrying
capacity of the Earth itself, particularly given the needs of other species.
See The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earthhttp://tinyurl.com/flametree

8. To encourage all adults to understand the violence they (unconsciously)
inflict on children and to take responsibility for ending this.

The methods of this nonviolent strategy are as follows:

1. To listen deeply to ourselves, each other and the Earth

2. To engage in acts of nonviolent resistance and creation: acts of nonviolent
protest and persuasion, acts of nonviolent noncooperation and acts of
nonviolent intervention, including the creation of new organisations,
communities, institutions and structures that genuinely meet the needs of all
beings in a just, peaceful and ecologically sustainable manner. (For ideas about
nonviolent actions, see Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action,
Boston: Porter Sargent, 1973.)

The People’s Charter Pledge:

Having read and agreed with this Charter:

1. I pledge to listen to the deep truth of myself, others and the Earth

2. I pledge to make every effort to progressively eliminate the violence I
inflict on myself, others and the Earth

3. I pledge to engage in acts of nonviolent resistance and/or creation
to bring about a nonviolent future on Earth

Signing The People’s Charter:

If you are
committed to acting on this Charter, please add your name and country to the
list of Charter participants HERE.

For Ideas:

If you need ideas to fulfil your pledge, please consult the websites and
books cited in The People’s Charter.

Exposure to nature is vital to our physical and emotional health, explains
Donald Wleklinski, of the University of Arkansas School of Nursing
faculty. He tells how “nature engages your attention in a relaxed fashion
with such things as leaves rustling, patterns of clouds, sunsets, a bird, and
the shape of an old tree. Nature captures our attention in subtle, bottom-up
ways and allows our top-down attention abilities a chance to regenerate.”
Natural environments “restore” our attention. Wleklinski’s presentation
is well backed up with thorough research and references. He indicates
that some of us may suffer from “nature-deficit” and shows how exposure to
nature can provide preventative health care and empower everyone, children and
adults, both physically and mentally. The presentation will include a
period for questions and answers.

BOOK AND FILM: A Force More Powerful explores 6 successful nonviolent movements in the
20th century starting (Disk One) with Gandhi's leadership of the Indian
Independence movement/the Salt March, the U.S. civil rights movement/the first
Sit-ins, the Anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa/the boycotts in the
Eastern Cape Province and (Disk Two) continuing with the Danish resistance to
Nazi Occupation, the Polish Solidarity Movement, and the Chilean democracy
movement to oust Augusto Pinochet.

When the World Outlawed War

Chat with David Swanson about his new book, hosted by Scott Horton.

This is a masterful account of how people in
the United States
and around the world worked to abolish war as a legitimate act of state policy
and won in 1928, outlawing war with a
treaty that is still on the books. Swanson’s account of the successful work
of those who came before us to insist that war be outlawed points us toward new
ways of thinking about both war and political activism. (David Swanson)

In January 1929 the U.S. Senate ratified by a
vote of 85 to 1 a treaty that is still on the books, still upheld by most of
the world, still listed on the U.S. State Department’s website — a treaty that
under Article VI of the U.S. Constitution is the “supreme law of the land.”
This treaty, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, bans all war. Bad wars and “good wars,”
aggressive wars and “humanitarian wars” — they are all illegal, having been
legally abolished like duelling, blood feuds, and slavery before them.

The wisdom of the War Outlawry movement of the 1920s is revived in a new book by
David Swanson and titled When the World Outlawed War. The full plan to outlaw
war has never been followed through on. We have a duty to carry the campaign
forward.

For Trayvon Martin of Florida, USA; for
Rabbi Jonathan Sandler of Toulouse, his sons, Gabriel and Arieh , and Miriam Monsonego; for the
others killed in France whose names I have not seen in the American press; and
for the families murdered in Afghanistan whose names have not been published in
the American press -- we grieve and we try to learn how to prevent such
killings in the future.

First, an English version
of the Mourners’ Kaddish in Time of War and Violence; then, my thoughts on the
causes and the meanings of these deaths. I urge that in
synagogues, churches, and mosques, memorial prayers be said this Friday,
Saturday, and Sunday for all those killed in these three moments of horror.

MOURNERS' KADDISH

IN TIME OF WAR &
VIOLENCE

Yit’gadal
v’yit’kadash shmei rabbah:May
Your Great Name, through our own expanding awareness and our fuller action,
lift You and us to become still higher and more holy.

For Your Great Name weaves together all the names of all
the beings in the universe, among them our own names, and among them those who
touch our lives deeply though we can no longer touch them -- (Cong:
Amein)

---
Throughout the world that You have offered us, a world of majestic
peaceful order that gives life through time and through eternity ---- And let's
say, Amein

So may the Great Name be blessed, through every Mystery
and Mastery of every universe.

May Your Name be blessed and celebrated, Its beauty
honored and raised high, may It be lifted and carried, may Its radiance be
praised in all Its Holiness –-- Blessed be!

Even though we cannot give You enough blessing, enough
song, enough praise, enough consolation to match what we wish to lay before you
–

And though we know that today there is no way to console
You when among us some who bear Your Image in our being are killing others who
bear Your Image in our being ---

Still we beseech that from the unity of Your Great Name
flow a great and joyful harmony and life for all of us. (Cong:
Amein)

You who make harmony in the ultimate reaches of the
universe, teach us to make harmony within ourselves, among ourselves --
and shalom, salaam, solh, peace for all the children of Abraham – those from
the family of Abraham & Sarah through Isaac and those from the family of
Abraham & Hagar through Ishmael -- and for all who dwell upon this
planet. (Cong: Amein)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

KILLING JEWS, KILLING MUSLIMS, KILLING
BLACKS

Three recent moments of horror:

A Frenchman kills a Jewish family and
several French soldiers (some of them Muslims) who had served the French
government’s interests by using violence against Muslim societies.

An American soldier kills several Muslim
families in Afghanistan,
the second Muslim country in which he has been ordered into four tours of
violence.

An armed Euro-American kills an unarmed
African-American for looking suspicious inside a gated community in Florida.

Three utterly different news
items? Merely, as a Secretary of Defense once euphemistically said,
“Stuff happens”? Just dots, no connections?

I don’t think so. For one thing, I think
all three killers were operating within a framework of what seemed like
legitimate violence. Even though there was widespread condemnation of their
acts, afterwards. Afterwards.

Beforehand?

The Florida killer was operating under a basic
American cultural “rule” (once felt by almost all white Americans, then by a
majority, and still by a large proportion of them): The lives of black folk are
far less valuable than the lives of white folk.

The Florida killer said he felt fearful. And
Fear in a white person is far more urgent to end than Life in a black person is
important to save.

Why did he feel afraid? Because the
domination of other human beings, the willingness to enslave one class of them,
lynch them, segregate them, impoverish them, imprison them, can only be
undergirded by coming to believe that this class of them are dangerous. The
oppression –- which benefits the oppressor – precedes and gives rise to the
Fear.

You can overcome fear by
connecting, communing, with the people you fear. (But then how can you keep the
benefits you get by oppressing them?) Or you can overcome fear by being willing
to suffer and die for a principle. Or you can overcome fear by being willing to
kill.

In France, a marginalized
Frenchman put meaning in his life by enlisting in a one-man army. An army to
avenge all the killings of Muslims by the French and Israeli armies. Anyone
wearing a French uniform, and anyone wearing not only an Israeli uniform but
the “uniform” of Orthodox Judaism, was dangerous. Even their tiny children.

He might have overcome his fear of these
“dangerous” people by connecting, communing with them, trying to affirm his own
humanity so that they would be more likely to affirm his. Or he might have
overcome his fear by risking suffering and even death, directly and
nonviolently challenging the governments he saw as dangerous and
frightening. Or he could overcome his fear by killing.

And the third killer, an American
soldier. He had been taught, not only in the brain but with every muscle and
blood vessel in his body, that his job, and more than that his moral task, his
sworn duty, is to kill Iraqis and Afghans. And certainly he fears them. They
have damaged his brain, distorted his life.

He could have transcended his fear by
trying to connect, to commune, with the Afghans he feared, whom he had been
ordered to kill. If his officers had prevented his doing that, he could have
transcended his fear by putting his freedom, maybe even his life, on the line
by nonviolently challenging them. Saying the fourth tour of duty was too much.
Laying down his machine-gun. Demanding to be discharged, to be able to make
love with his wife and parent his children.

Or he could transcend his fear by
killing.

No wonder the Army that had taught him
to kill brought him home after he killed, lest he be tried by the Afghans whose
community he had shattered. After all, that same Army has time after time
killed civilians, murdered wedding parties, broken the brains and bones of
children -- claiming all the while these dead were merely “collateral damage.”
That same Army has taught such fear and hatred of Islam that its soldiers could
piss on the bodies of dead human beings because they were Muslim, they could
casually burn the book that to Muslims is the very Word of God.

So one soldier went beyond the Army’s
expectations. If they were honest, they might give him a medal. Not the Medal
of Honor, not the Medal of Courage, but the Medal of Fear Transcended.

In every one of our traditions, religious
and secular, there are streaks of blood. In the Torah, proclaiming genocide against the
Midianites. In the Gospels, pouring contempt upon the Jews. In the Quran,
calling not only for the inner jihad, the struggle against arrogance and
idolatry, but on occasion for jihads of blood against some communities. In the
Declaration of Independence, with its denunciation of “the merciless lndian
savages'” who were the indigenous peoples of this land.

Let us not turn our rage, our fear, and
then our violence against those “others” who have such bloody streaks amidst their
wisdom, while pretending there are no such streaks amidst our own.

Let us instead remember that these streaks
are only streaks in the many fabrics woven of connection and community, woven
of a “decent respect to the opinions of Humankind.” A fabric woven
by all human cultures and by all the life-forms of our planet. A fabric of
fringes, where every thing we call our “own” as if we own it came into being
only through the Interbreathing of all life.

Shalom, salaam, solh –- Peace!
Healing! Wholeness!--- Arthur

III. STOP KILLING ANIMALS

ENDING ANIMAL EUTHANASIA

Is pet overpopulation a myth? Inside Nathan Winograd's
"Redemption"

October
02, 2007|By Christie Keith, Special to SF Gate

Nathan Winograd is the author of "Redemption:
The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America"
and director of the national No Kill
Advocacy Center. He is a graduate of StanfordLawSchool,
a former criminal prosecutor and corporate attorney, and was director of
operations for the San Francisco SPCA and executive director of the TompkinsCountySPCA,
two of the most successful shelters in the nation. Photo courtesy Nathan
Winograd.

In the
still-heated debate over reducing shelters deaths in California, there is probably no more
polarizing figure than Nathan Winograd, former director of operations for the
San Francisco SPCA.

At first glance,
Winograd has all the credentials any animal rights activist or shelter professional
could ask for. He's a vegan. He left a lucrative career as a prosecuting
attorney to devote himself to helping animals. Last year, his income was only
$35,000. He has spearheaded the No Kill Advocacy Center, a national
organization aimed at ending the killing of pets in animal shelters. While
director of operations at the San Francisco SPCA, he worked with then-president
Richard Avanzino to implement a wide variety of animal livesaving programs, and
then went on to achieve similar success as director of a rural shelter in
upstate New York.

But Winograd isn't making a lot of friends in
the shelter industry these days. That's because he authored a book called "Redemption: The Myth of Pet
Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America" that challenges
the very foundation of nearly every theory and principle of shelter management
in this country: The idea that there are more pets dying in shelters each year
than homes available for those pets.

In fact, with
between 4 and 5 million dogs and cats being killed in shelters nationwide every
year, denying the existence of pet overpopulation seems ridiculous. If there
aren't more pets than homes, why are so many animals ending up in shelters in
the first place?

Conventional
wisdom tells us it's because of irresponsible pet owners who aren't willing to
work to keep their pets in their homes. It's a failure of commitment, of
caring, and of the human/animal bond. If fewer pets were born, there would be
fewer coming into shelters. If people cared more about their pets, they
wouldn't give them up so easily, would spay and neuter them so they wouldn't
reproduce, and wouldn't let them stray.

That is exactly
what I always believed, too, for the nearly 17 years I've been writing about
pets. And yet, after reading "Redemption," I don't believe it
anymore.

Lately, I often find myself grasping for a noun to
represent the word “humane.” According to the dictionary, that word is
“humaneness.” But that’s hard to say, looks strange on paper and just sounds
weird. So, by instinct, I usually grab the word “humanity.”

A recent
advertising campaign from one of the world’s largest agribusinesses misses the
larger poin...

That also sounds wrong.

I need the word when I say something like, “The humaneness
of concentrated feedlot operations is questionable.” Or, “Consumers today judge
farmers more and more on their humaneness.”

Wouldn’t it sound better to say we are judged on
our humanity?

But “humanity” is a dubious choice, not only
because the dictionary says it’s wrong, but also because it has another
meaning: “of or pertaining to human beings.”

That other meaning is, possibly, contradictory.

Those who coined the word “humane” probably picked
a term that means “human” to describe compassion because they thought our
species exemplified compassionate feeling. Possibly the first people to use the
word “humane” also believed that our behavior was more compassionate than the
behavior of other species.

We received several letters recently from people
who, based on that belief, objected to our article about keystone predators, Keystone
Species: How Predators Create Abundance and Stability. The article
presented evidence in favor of the reintroduction of species such as wolves to
the American wilderness because predators play a keystone role in the ecosystem,
fostering more diversity and resilience in the natural community. We thought
the story made a valid scientific point, but some readers objected to the idea
of encouraging wolves to live in our wilderness. Wolves sometimes kill
livestock, after all, and they kill deer and elk that may otherwise be killed
for sport or perhaps to feed a human hunter’s family.

Some of the letter writers also asserted that
wolves — unlike human hunters — kill cruelly. Wolves take new fawns and calves.
They drag down and maul living animals. In contrast, several writers suggested
that human hunters use their high-powered rifles, muskets and bows to kill
swiftly and “humanely.”

According to some, the world is a more “humane”
place when we discourage other predators and leave the killing up to humans. I
don’t think that’s true.

Every generation of my family, as far back as I
know, raised livestock and competed directly with animal predators. The past
several generations raised sheep and cattle along the fringes of the North American
wilderness in Oklahoma, California
and Texas, and before that in Alabama and Virginia.
They routinely killed wolves, mountain lions, hawks, raccoons and coyotes. My
great uncle, Buford Oller, was a government trapper whose profession was
killing troublesome coyotes and mountain lions in California’s
Sierra Nevada foothills.

What Does It Mean to
‘Kill Humanely’?

(Page 2 of 3)

By Bryan Welch
October/November 2011

p. 2 (105)I grew up with a mythology that
encouraged us to kill predators — even wipe them out if necessary to protect
human livelihoods. We believed wolves, mountain lions and coyotes killed more
cruelly than human beings. That was part of the reason it was OK to shoot, trap
and poison them indiscriminately. If our predator eradication efforts were
cruel, at least they were more humane than what the predators would have done
to the sheep, cattle, deer and elk if we’d let them.

It wasn’t until the wolves and mountain lions were
almost gone that some of us started to question these assumptions.

As I write this, just before sunrise on a summer
morning in Kansas,
a coyote is coincidentally moving through the cornfield just north of my
watchful ewes, lambs and vigilant donkeys.

Today, we don’t kill predators on our farm. We
don’t find it necessary. The mule and the donkeys do a pretty good job of
discouraging the coyotes, bobcats and mountain lions we have in our area. We
sacrifice a couple of little lambs or goats each year — fewer than we lose to
inadequate mothering.

We’ve decided we would rather live in a world that
includes wolves, mountain lions and wolverines, even if it means fewer elk,
deer, cattle, goats and sheep.

I clean up a dozen chickens a year after an
opossum, or more often a hawk, kills them and takes the best parts. But I love
watching the red-tailed hawk soaring through the yard in the hunt. I get a kick
out of seeing the opossum family scuttling across the lawn in the beam of my
flashlight. I think our world would be a far poorer place without the wolf and
the lion, or the hawk and the opossum.

It’s true there are probably few quicker and less
painful ways to kill than with a perfectly aimed bullet to the brain or spine.
Unfortunately, though, hunters seldom make that perfect shot. Hunting — whether
with a rifle, musket or bow — is an enterprise full of uncertainty and random
events. The target may die immediately, may run half a mile and then die, or
may simply disappear, wounded and in pain, with a bullet or an arrow in its
body.

U.S.
hunters report losing hundreds of thousands of wounded deer every year. U.S.
drivers report hitting about 1.5 million deer every year. And that’s just deer,
not other wildlife. I remember peeling a western bluebird off the grill of my
car years ago, and reflecting on the “humanitarian” implications of hurtling
through nature at 70 mph in a 3,000-pound machine.

And then there’s industrialized agriculture, which
has used its improved efficiencies to justify the invention of the chamber of
horrors known as “confinement agriculture.” Plus, if you include the hundreds
of thousands of acres of wildlife habitat we destroy to grow our corn, soybeans
and coffee, well, humans may not deserve the right to describe our species’
role in the environment as “humane.”